Nature and Climate Change
Curvism is the word I have been using for over forty years to describe an art concept that takes us into a more hopeful future. Like metamodernism, Curvism is a reaction to both modernism and postmodernism. Curvism, however, goes further back to include an understanding of premodern times, not fully accounted for by metamodernism.
The clock is ticking. The Earth is about to erupt. Can two aliens inspire three reporters to motivate 7 1/2 billion people to save themselves from climate change? It’s the human race against the clock!
Firkins is an artist who works in “curvism,” a concept he created to celebrate the roundness and fluidity of nature. It led him to writing a movie script called “The Filmmakers.” The movie starts as science fiction then turns into a documentary about the consequences of climate change and possible solutions.
A shadow sweeps across the earth. There's a ring around the sun now. Totality! Beautiful, beautiful beautiful. Awesome! Stillness. Complete silence. I stand and stare into the black hole and ring of light.
The art and philosophy of Curvism creates a conceptual framework and model to identify and explain the problems of world history and what seems to be missing. Curvism points the direction for moving forward into a more hopeful future.
God came to Earth in a spaceship. God had been traveling a long, long time, looking for the perfect place to live. He was on a journey looking for Heaven. While searching for Heaven, God discovered Earth.
Woe is me. Oh, the world of buying and selling. Is there no escape?
I look out my window. I see blue sky and colored leaves. It’s still a beautiful day. I think I’ll return to the woods and take my family with me. It’s still not too late.
I love to get out of the cubical world and into the light. I love to see my shadow. I am my shadow and my shadow is me. We are connected. When I see my shadow I know I am alive and standing in the light. My shadow and I are dependent on the light for our existence. Without light, we die.
I love the way my dog seems so alive, awake and aware when we go into the woods, to the river. He is such an animal. I’m stuck being human. I’ve forgotten my animal nature. It has been almost completely programmed out of me by our modern, computerized, commercialized consumer culture.
Again my dog and I go out into the woods; me to escape my job working in a basement office cubicle under fluorescent lights behind a computer screen; my dog to escape the confines of being a domesticated house dog. We go to the woods seeking the wild.
Who needs a natural environment when we can live and do live in our own controlled world.
Most humans have the awareness of their own death lurking in the back of their minds. Now we also have to worry about the death of the planet.
I was watching T.V. last night and heard Al Gore talking about the seriousness of Global Warming and the need to take immediate meaningful action. Al Gore was delivering his speech to the Kyoto Conference in Japan in 1997. I was watching this rerun on CSPAN's history channel.
Every time I get a chance to escape the man-made world, I see it from the perspective that it’s all a man-made illusion and that it suffers mostly from unnatural causes made by humans themselves. Consequently, I realize that if it’s all an illusion and man-made, then it can be imagined differently … remade, recreated. Humans have the capacity to choose to live differently, to establish and live by economic systems based on needs, equity, fairness, justice, compassion, respect, mutual aid, cooperation, and love. Not greed.
What business do the Republicans have building more roads in our National Forests? Big business! The special interests of the timber, mining, oil, coal, uranium, cattle, natural gas, and tourist industries all want new roads built so they can get their machines into the last remaining wilderness areas and their hands on the last remaining natural resources currently controlled and protected by the federal government.
We have cut our umbilical cord to mother earth. Believing we are independent, we have forgotten our ties with nature. Our individual lives are now directly dependent and chained to the life and growth of the machine. There’s something wrong with this way of life, something inhuman about this way of living.
Each and every one of our transactions, transgressions, deeds, words, and thoughts are monitored and recorded forever, traceable and unerasable. Science did away with the old God and took God’s place.
I think that maybe if I keep going I can connect with Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Jim the slave and we can follow the river to freedom. I can see us now. I would ask Huck, “How far is it to freedom?” and I would ask Tom, “How long will it take to get there?” Of Jim the slave I would ask the hardest question of all, “How will we know when we are free?”
Our language gives us many words for specific actions we can take to undo the damage we have done and to live more wisely on this earth. I offer a list of verbs to guide our actions.
Morels are shy and sly. You can look right at them and not see them, even if you are looking for them. But if you do see one, you will probably see more near by. Looking for morel mushrooms is magical. Finding them is even more magical. They symbolize pure wildness.
Emerson goes even further to clarify the difference between Reason and Spirit. “That which, intellectually considered, we call Reason, considered in relation to nature, we call Spirit. Spirit is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself.”
When I leave the road and the path to walk in the wilderness, I am immediately and intimately surrounded by nature.
Whereas Muir’s father believed the road to God was straight and narrow, Muir himself found a way that was curved and expansive, leading to a wilderness where God was everywhere.
The universe is alive. It moves all around me as I sit, still as a rock, in the middle of a meadow.
The Earth loved us, gave birth to us, gave us all that we needed, gave us a home, gave us an opportunity, gave us a chance, gave us love.
In the very beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth and then created man. Together they tried to create the earthly world, but they could not. They envisioned the world differently; so they went their separate ways, each creating their own world.
